It seems to me that Christianity stopped committing atrocities whenever it became separated from actual real, hands-on political power. I suspect that this will be true of all religions, secular (non-theistic) as well as theistic: it is the real-world power combined with a firm and unshakable belief that one is not just correct, but ‘absolutely right’ that produces tyranny.

Since this piece focuses on Christians forming what they hope will be a religious terrorist organization, I naturally focused on Christianity. That, plus Christianity martyred more of my family than any other doctrine – so it’s personal. Of course Communism and Islam are greater threats now than Christianity has been in the 20th century, but my point was that regardless of which religion it is, it can and will be used by some to usurp power over others. If we let them.

As for Jesus whispering similar things to people – I understand your belief in this, but there have been many wars between Christian sects all of whom truly and honestly believed to have Jesus’s true message while the other guys were idiots who were wrong. Just consider the difference between Catholics and Evangelicals on the topic of evolution: Catholics assert it is the means through which the various species were created by God while Evangelicals claim it is Devil’s teachings…

Solzhenitsyn: good book, the Gulag Archipelago. However, Solzhenitsyn himself longed for a totalitarian state himself – he just wanted the tyrant to be the Russian Orthodox Church instead of the Bolsheviks…which is really much the same thing.

As for Buddha: he was not so much enlightened as cowardly. He was in the perfect position to alleviate the suffering of the common folk, being a crown prince and all that. Instead he went and sulked in a cave….and had the nerve to accept food from the poorest of the poor, who thought it was their duty to feed him even if it meant their own children starved. Yeah, great spiritual enlightening there!

And before you go on about the accomplishments of monks who meditate: please consider their diet and that their ‘enlightened meditation’ perfectly fits the symptoms of brain damage due to malnutrition.

I would not go looking for spiritual advice there!

As for God being the foundation of morality. I did not intend to say that since God does not exist, it cannot be the foundation of morality.

I do not know whether god(s) exist or not or how we would define them. I suppose I am very much an ignostic. As such, I would need a clear definition, because different people mean different things when they say ‘God’ – and without knowing what they mean, I cannot possibly hold an opinion, much less knowledge, regarding their existence. (Having said this, I find little to no evidence that supports the existence of Bible-definined deity, and consider monotheism to be the least credible of all the theological positions – but that is not the point here.)

What I was referring to is the continued assertion by Christian apologists that morality is whatever their God defines it to be. So, if God commands genocide, then genocide is the moral thing to do. If selling your daughter to her rapist for 40 silver pieces is what God says is the moral thing to do, then that is indeed the ‘moral’ thing to do.

In other words, many Christians argue that without God, there can be no morality.

Because ‘morality’ is obeying anything and everything that God commands.

I hold the diametrically opposite view: ‘obedience’ to morality dictated from the outside (be it from a parent or God or teapot or whatever else) is exactly that. Obedience.

And obedience, in my never-humble-opinion, precludes morality.

Morality is making decisions about what is right and wrong, what is good, bad or evil. Weighing the consequences of one’s actions – then choosing what to do and living with it. Morality is reasoning from the first principle of self-ownership and deriving the least incorrect course of action therefrom.

Morality is choosing one’s actions and accepting the responsibilities thereof.

Without this decision making process, without internal locust of decision-making, there is no ‘morality’ – only obedience.

After all, how can you be held responsible for following someone else’s rules?

So, to my way of thinking, ‘obeying the word of God’ is abdicating ‘morality’ in favour of ‘obedience’.

Because doing the right thing for the wrong reason does not make you ‘moral’….it makes you, at best, ‘accidentally right’. Because you did not make the choice as to what the moral course of action would be – you simply obeyed the what somebody else decided is the moral course of action.

Sorry to go into this in so much detail, but as I did not make my position clear in the original post, I want to make sure to be more clear in my reply.

To recap: I am not saying that morality cannot come from God since God does not exist: I am saying that obeying somebody else’s rules about what is or is not moral is not morality itself, it is simply obedience because the locust of decision-making about what is or is not moral is external to one-self. And I am perfectly aware that many religious people consider ‘morality’ to be ‘obeying God’s commands’ because they believe they are owned by God (in one manner or another). I acknowledge their belief, but disagree with them. Obedience is not ‘morality’ – or every puppy would be the most ‘moral’ creature in the world!

Of course, being a fact-focused person, I know better than to buy in to the hollow propaganda about this profoundly evil person, who fetishized the suffering of others and maximized it in order to bring about her own salvation. Her clinics did not differentiate between curable and incurable patients and used unsterilized needles for all…as well as denying even child-patients life-saving medical care and all painkillers….’cause, suffering would bring them closer to Jesus!

If the evil bitch Agnes (self-called Mother Theresa, which in itself should be a hint as she was NOT a mother and it is deeply immoral of her to usurp that noble title) is your example of the good things Jesus whispers to people, then you confirm my suspicion that all religions are, at their core, evil incarnate. And that to get good people to commit evil deeds, all you need is religion….

Jesus himself: perhaps we can leave discussion of the Nazarene and his teachings for another day…

As for giving God a chance: I rather like Thor…and Tyr…and Hospodin and Baba Maja. Have you given them a chance?

John Robson, PhD – columnist and commentator with Sun Media,
– Invited Professor at the University of Ottawa.

****************************

Elsa Schieder, PhD
thinker extraordinaire
– a.k.a. Dr Zee, for good thinking from A to Z,
– creator of The Idea Emporium.
Central Idea: Without the capacity to think, there is no freedom. We are locked inside blocks in our heads.

****************************

Alexandra Belaireblogger – as Xanthippa
championing freedom of speech – like for Connie and Marc Fournier,
who had Canada’s oldest Conservative forum.

Brian Lilley– host of Byline on Sun News,
– political journalist and Senior Correspondent for Sun Media’s National Bureau.

****************************

Mark Milkeauthor of
Tax Me, I’m Canadian:
A Taxpayer’s Guide
to Your Money and
How Politicians Spend It– director of Alberta Policy Studies
for the Fraser Institute,
– lecturer in political science at the University of Calgary.

****************************

Marcel G. Latouche
President & CEO
The Institute for Public Sector Accountability
plus lecturer of economics and public sector finance at SAIT Polytechnic.

****************************

IN TRIBUTE

Link Byfield– founder of the Citizen’s Centre for Freedom and Democracy, a lobby group dedicated to advocating responsible government,
– for 18 years, editor and publisher for the Alberta Report.

As sad as this is, Islamic persecution of religious minorities is a fact.

And yes, it does include Islamic minorities which differ from the majority sect of Islam – in this way, Islam does not differentiate. Every sect of Islam persecutes religious minorities other than itself.

Why?

Raymond Ibrahim is one person who writes about this in detail – and discusses so in this video.

Another person who speaks about this issue with knowledge and passion is Dr. Bill Warner, who is making a speaking tour of Canada.

When Bill Warner saw the second plane hit the second tower, he knew this was jihad, and that confronting this would be his life work from that moment on.

And it has been.

He has studied the Islamic religious texts – the Quran, Hadiths and Sira.

He has written easy-to-read versions which are authoritative. That is, the sources are cited for every statement.

He has spoken from coast to coast.

And he continues to ask: what do we do now?

January 2014 marked a turning point.

Bill Warner’s background is in science. He has a PhD in Physics. This has led him to value facts. But it was becoming clear to him that the facts were out there – and so many people were not listening.

What to do?

He saw that Muslims loudly claimed the role of victim – despite massive Muslim persecution of Christians and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and atheists and agnostics.

It was clear to Bill that it was time for the persecuted non-Muslims to proclaim the reality of their persecution, and it was time for the persecuted to speak out. For instance, it time for all Christians to speak out on behalf of persecuted Christians instead of staying silent.

A Voice for the Voiceless, Bill has proclaimed.

He has dug into history, especially the brutal history of Islam, to explain why so many of the victimized are staying silent. And he is doing all he can to arouse the silent into community action.

DR BILL WARNER
will be speaking on:
– the content of Islam re non-Muslims,
including prohibitions against freedom of speech;
– the content of Sharia re non-Muslims;
– the 1400 history of Islam, including the persecution
and victimization of Christians, Jews,
Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics
as well as Muslims who disagree in
any way with the Muslims in power;
– and the quest for effective action
to reach people with this information,
especially to reach them on an emotional level.

Dr Bill Warner.
Courage, Conviction, Perseverance.
From Political Islam,
to 1400 Years of Terror, to …
A Voice for the Voiceless.

“My mission is to educate the world
about the doctrine and history of Political Islam.
I deal with facts, not opinions.”

A Special Thank You
Individuals who take action are so important.
For this event, many thanks tothe Christian Men’s Luncheon Group
in Grande Prairie.
It has been instrumental
in bringing Bill to Canada.
Its members realize
that the education of Canadians
with regards to the ideology of Islam
is desperately needed.
The group also brought
Robert Spencer in 2013.

Elsa Shieder is a freedom lover who has worked relentlessly both in raising awareness of things that may endanger our freedoms and in helping people learn how to work for more freedom by telling the stories of how other freedom lovers do just that.

Over time, she has interviewed some pretty awesome freedom activists, from Bill Warner through Nonie Darwish, from Fred Litvin to Rahil Raza and on and on and on.

I was honoured and flattered when she asked to interview me as part of this series.

My interview will be up tonight at 8 EST and will be available for free for the first 48 hours, then it will go behind a nominal paywall to help cover production costs.

It now seems more than likely that today’s shooting was a terrorist attack – jihad performed by a home-grown terrorist, as the shooter was known to the police and had had his passport confiscated for fear that he would go join ISIL.

First, this is the War Memorial where the first shooting and the murder of the Canadian Soldier, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo took place as he stood honour guard as the Memorial. (Aside – whose idiotic idea was it to have the honour guards have unloaded weapons?)

You can see the group of people where ordinary Canadian, heroes each and every one of them, rushed to Cpl. Cirillo’s aid – put pressure on his wounds and performed CPR on him until paramedics arrived instead of running for cover.

In the background is the Chateau Laurier (on the left) and the Old Train Station which is now Conference Board of Canada (on the right) and the North-bound lanes of Elgin St. between them. That is the route I take every morning to bring my high-school-student sun to his co-op placement, just a few blocks from here.

Second, this is the main entry hall in the Centre Block of the Canadian Parliament building, leading to the Library (the only original part of the Parliament buildings that was not burned down in the Great Fire. Off this hall are meeting rooms – and, co-incidentally, I have attended a wedding of a friend of mine in one of these room. (Yes, ordinary Canadians CAN book a wedding at the Parliament…though, after this, I’m not so sure….)

This map—last updated in November 2012—was created to illustrate the 100 most powerful buildings in Ottawa. Many of these buildings are under lockdown orders now: all federal buildings including Parliament Hill, the Elgin Street police station, the U.S. Embassy, the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library, the Rideau Centre, and the Ottawa courthouse, among others.

The topmost highlighted building (purplish) is the US Embassy – and we were on lockdown in a non-Government (and thus not highlighted) building just a few minutes’ walk east of it.

Yeah, when it happens in a place that you pass several times each day, it really strikes home…

P.S. While in lockdown, I could – every now and hen – use my son’s work’s computer (but not log into anything, and so could not live-blog the event…). As such, I posted a few progress comments over at BlazingCatFur: thanks for the well-wishes and support from all the folks over there!

‘Ottawa officials say he was recently designated a “high-risk traveller” by the Canadian government and that his passport had been seized – the same circumstances surrounding the case of Martin Rouleau-Couture, the Quebecker who was shot Monday after running over two Canadian Forces soldiers.’

I hear ISIL has a nice photo of him they are circulating…when I get a link, I’ll update.